A classic of avant-garde cinema, 'Entr'acte' was made as an intermission for the Ballets Suédois production of Relâche, a Dada theater work that premiered in Paris in December of 1924. The ballet's director, Francis Picabia, gave René Clair a short scenario around which to build the film, and Erik Satie composed an original score to accompany it. But the finished work is "pure" cinema — the individual shots and the connections between them resulting in what Clair described as "visual babblings."
Key figures of the contemporary Parisian art world appear in the film in absurd comic cameos, including Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Borlin (director of the Ballets Suédois), Georges Auric, Picabia, and Clair himself. As Picabia declared, Entr'acte, "respects nothing except the right to roar with laughter."
Excerpt from Steven Higgins, "Still Moving: The Film and Media Collections of the Museum of Modern Art." (2006). p.104.